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Low Battery Communication Report

This document summarizes experiments conducted to measure how the performance of wireless sensor nodes, in terms of packet error rate (PER), varies with battery voltage level, distance, and environment. Two approaches were used to measure PER for different distances and environments at full battery voltage of 3V and near the cutoff voltage of 1.7V. The results showed that PER increases with distance and is higher at near cutoff voltages. Graphs of PER versus distance and battery voltage over time were generated to analyze the effects.

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23 views2 pages

Low Battery Communication Report

This document summarizes experiments conducted to measure how the performance of wireless sensor nodes, in terms of packet error rate (PER), varies with battery voltage level, distance, and environment. Two approaches were used to measure PER for different distances and environments at full battery voltage of 3V and near the cutoff voltage of 1.7V. The results showed that PER increases with distance and is higher at near cutoff voltages. Graphs of PER versus distance and battery voltage over time were generated to analyze the effects.

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Mayam Ayo
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Poster Abstract: Low Battery Communication

Saroj Rajavari, Eirini Petraki, Hou Shu-Yen


Uppsala University, Sweden
Abstract
Wireless sensor nodes are some times operate at remote
locations with less accessibility. Most of the wireless
sensor networks (WSN) operate using 3V coin cell
batteries or AAA batteries. The battery voltage is limited
resource. To check how performance of WSN depends on
the battery voltage level, we conducted experiments to
measure how the performance of the sensor nodes in the
form of Packet Error Rate (PER) varies for indoor and
out door environments for various distances. We also
measured the PER at near cutoff voltage of the wireless
sensor nodes.

We used three different voltage supplies for nRF24L01+


transceiver to do three different experiments. First, we
used 3V power supply available from Arduino board .
Second, We used DC power supply available at lab to
provide variable voltage supplies from 3.3-1.5 V. Third,
we used 3 V coin cell battery to supply the transceiver.

1 Introduction
Each wireless sensor node comprised of
microcontroller, sensor, transceiver (Transmitter and
receiver ) and battery. WSN's use Time Division Duplex
(TDD) protocol to communicate. WSNs are used in so
many areas to monitor physical parameters of systems
such as heat, pressure, light, humidity and so on. WSN
are power constrained devices. So to improve their life
time and performance, it is important to know how they
perform in various environments, various distances
between transmitter and receiver systems, various battery
voltage levels of transmitter and receiver devices.

2 Battery power consumption


To improve wireless sensor node life time, It is
important to use power very sparingly. For example we
can control ON time and OFF time of sensor nodes or
can increase data rate of communication , which
contributes to lower the average current consumption or
decrease transmit Radio Frequency (RF) power levels at
transmitters.

3 System Design
In this experiments we used Arduino nano [1]
board, which has Atmel microcontroller ATmega328[2],
Nordic Semiconductor nRF24L01+ [3] 2.4 GHz
transceiver. Arduino nano operates with input voltage
levels between 7-20 V. The Arduino nano has 5V
operating voltage (logic levels). The nRF24L01+
transceiver has operating voltage levels between 3.3-1.7
V. The ATmega328 microcontroller which is present on
Arduino nano board has Serial Peripheral Interface
(SPI ) [4] protocol interface to communicate with
peripherals . The SPI protocol has clock line, data lines,
slave select lines. The nRF24L01+ transceiver has builtin SPI interface. To convert Arduino nano logic levels
from 5 V to 3 V of nRF24L01+ transceiver , We used
Texas Instruments 8-channel Bi-directional logic level
converter - TXB0108 [5].

Figure 1:typical setup using DC power supply

Figure 1 shows typical setup of two wireless sensor


nodes, one transceiver is powered by DC power supply
and second one is powered by using coin batteries.

4 Approach
In this experiments we used two different approaches to
measure packet error rates for various distance at
different environments with full voltage (3V) for
transceiver and near cutoff voltage (1.7 V) of
transceivers. In one configuration, we kept receiving
WSN node transceiver at full voltage 3V and varied
transmitter WSN transceiver supply voltage from 3.3 V
to 1.5 V and took PER measurements for fixed distance
between them.

4.1 Approach I
First approach is based on Manicbug's [6] RF24
library and RF24Network library. Using above libraries
we created loop back from transmitter to receiver to
measure packet success/error rates based on successful
reception of acknowledgement. We sent 250 packets as
one transaction, one packet at a time from transmitter
side and waited for receiver acknowledgements. If we
received ACK, we considered it as successful
transmission. We incremented counter value based on
ACK count. Finally computed percentage of packet
success rate as total number of received ACK's divided
by total number of transmitted packets. From this we
computed packet error rate as 100 minus packet success

rate. For consistency, we took average value for 10


transactions, where each transaction consist of 250 packet
transmission.

4.2 Approach II
Second approach is based on the device drivers for
nRF24L01+. Using above the device drivers , we were
able to modify register values of nRF24L01+ . So we had
greater control over the code, which is running on the
ATmega328 code. Using this code, we created loop back
from transmitter to receiver to measure packet
success/error rates, based on successful reception of
acknowledgement. We sent 250 packets as one
transaction, one packet at a time from transmitter side
and waited for receiver acknowledgements. If we
received ACK, we considered it as successful
transmission. We incremented counter value based on
ACK count. Finally computed percentage of packet
success rate as total number of received ACK's divided
by total number of transmitted packets. From this we
computed packet error rate as 100 minus packet success
rate. For consistency we took average value for 10
transactions ,where each transaction consist of 250 packet
transmission.
We used shell script and gnuplot to plot live results in
this approach.

5 Results
We measured and created graphs for packet error rates
for various environments and for different distances. We
observed packet error rate performance near cutoff
voltages. We set retransmission count value of
nRF24L01+ transceiver to zero, to measure packet error
rate.

Figure 3 : Automated graph with battery level in red


(multiplied by 10) and packet success rate in green.
In figure 3, it is possible to see how battery voltage
discharges with time and charges after while once load is
removed. It is also to possible see how packet success
rate goes down with decreasing battery voltage level.

6 Conclusions
We observed packet error rates for various transceiver
battery levels, various transmit RF power levels, various
environments and various data rates. We observed that
greater the distance, greater the packet error rate. At near
cutoff voltage levels packet error rates increases rapidly.
But it is still possible to have communication link
between transmitter and receiver using multiple
retransmissions at near cutoff battery voltage. Once
voltage levels falls far below the cutoff voltage, then
there is no connection exist between transmitter and
receiver. Because of both transceivers are switched
OFF. The lower RF power levels contributes to more
packet error rates, because of Signal to Noise Ratio
(SNR) is decreases with decrease in transmit RF power
level.

Acknowledgments
We would like to thank our supervisors professor
Christian Rohner and professor Uwe Zimmermann for
their suggestions, discussions and guidance.

6 References

Figure 2 :packet success rates for various distance and


environments

In Figure2 it is possible see that by increasing distances


the packet success rates decreases, which means packet
error rates increases.

1.http://arduino.cc/en/Main/arduinoBoardNano
2.http://www.atmel.com/devices/atmega328.aspx
3.http://www.nordicsemi.com/eng/Products/2.4GHzRF/nRF24L01
4.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Peripheral_Interface
_Bus
5. http://www.ti.com/product/txb0108
6. https://github.com/maniacbug

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